


No, you're not on a ketamine trip; it's just like this around here

by Chokopoppo



Series: Reincarnation Cycle [4]
Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, I literally do not know how to tag this fic except that it's a straight up shitpost, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jimmy/Edgar Vargas in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24277132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: Edgar Vargas is desperate for work, which is the only reason he's here, now, drinking a vodka lemonade in a condemned building and trying to figure out if someone slipped acid into his coffee in the morning. Keep up, keep up. It's a scramble around here every summer, Vargas, it's a scramble every time. You don't want this job, Vargas. You don't want this job.
Series: Reincarnation Cycle [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/370094
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	No, you're not on a ketamine trip; it's just like this around here

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, turns out ALMC and Reincarnation are the same universe after all!
> 
> I will not apologize for this. You cannot make me apologize for this. I have done something that people should apologize for, but I am not sorry because I'm a hedonist and this is for me

In total, Edgar sits in the waiting room for twenty minutes. That’s just enough time for him to flip through his own resume twice, incorrectly identify a Manet print as a Monet, accidentally check his watchless wrist more times than can be played off as anything but a nervous tic, and turn down about seven proffered peppermints from a cheerfully overbearing secretary with a first name for a last name. By the time Ms. Piper tells him that Professor Necho is ready to see him in a tone of voice that implies she’s a golden retriever cruelly transformed into a human in a daytime made-for-TV children’s flick, he’s nothing but a bundle of nerves tied together under his Sunday best.

It’s the fourth interview of the week, he should be used to this by now, but every time he starts to settle, he remembers fresh how much he needs this job, and the tempo of his heartbeat rockets back into the stratosphere. That apartment isn’t going to pay its own rent, and Jimmy’s tenuously legal job can barely support one person.

Ms. Piper leads him into the kind of office he daydreams about, small but serviceable and voraciously packed with activity. Three floor-to-ceiling bookshelves blocked around what he assumes is a broom closet door, potted plants crawling over each other by the windows, and a rotating fan upsetting the stacks of paper that sprout from every flat surface like the infrastructure of some distant, alien city. He feels like he’s looking into a future he desperately wants to make his. His hands grip the folder with his resume tightly.

“Thanks, Rebecca,” says the man at the desk, in an accent Edgar can almost place. British, almost, sans the polish of a BBC newscaster. Sans any polish at all, really—his shirtsleeves are rolled to the elbow, his tie loose around his neck. Broad shouldered. Probably tall. “You’re Edgar Vargas?”

“Ah, yes,” he says, and nervously surges forward to shake his hand as Ms. Piper shuts the door behind her. Even up close, it’s impossible to guess the professor’s age. His dreadlocks, which are cleanly separated and held back in a thick ponytail behind his head, are grey at the temples and black at his shoulders, but teaching could do that to any man at any time. If there are wrinkles behind his half-moon glasses, Edgar can’t see them. He could be anywhere between thirty-five and sixty. “I’m sorry, I was under the impression I’d be having this interview with a professor Urov? Er, I’m sorry, doctor—“

“Nah, call him professor, it’s funny,” the man says, grinning, and takes his hand. His skin is rougher than callus and warm to the touch. “Honestly, he was definitely supposed to be conducting the interview process, but he took one look at the prospect of doing actual work and bolted. Literally, ran like a child. He is…exceedingly lazy. Terrible worker. I carry this department on my back.”

“He…ran?”

“Mhm,” he hums. “Rebecca told us we had someone for the interview, and he just crawled out the window and sprinted across the green. Not these windows, though, obviously, they do _not_ open. Speaking of, you’re gonna want to take off your jacket.”

It _is_ a little warm, but Edgar is desperate to stand on any formality he can get purchase on. “Thank you, but I’m alright, really.”

“You’re not gonna feel that way in ten minutes when your back is like the hide of a dolphin and the smell coming off your body throws off the balance of my office’s delicately managed aromasphere. Coffee, cigarettes, tums. Do you know how hard it is to balance a chalky scent like tums with coffee and cigarettes? The atmosphere in here is an art.” He motions to the chair across from his table with his pen. “Sit, it’s super weird that you’re just hovering and weirder if I sit while you stand.”

Edgar tries to think of a time in his life when he felt as thoroughly out of his depth as this. The first time Jimmy came charging into his office to loudly proposition him, maybe, though it’d be close. “I’m sorry,” he says, sitting (and reluctantly pulling his jacket off his shoulders), “I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Right,” he says, and holds his hand out for Edgar to pass him his resume. Edgar passes him his resume. “It’s Bartimaeus.”

“…B-Barti—um—“

“No, go ahead and laugh, my name is _ridiculous,_ ” Bartimaeus says, more than a hint of pride coloring his voice, “that’s my _name!_ My parents gave it to me! Were they insane, or did they just hate me? No one knows for sure. Indisputably the weirdest name in the department, until Queezle got her position.”

“ _Queezle?_ ” Is this a prank show? He better get paid if this is a prank show.

“I _know,_ right? It’s _so bad._ She works in the next office over,” he says, and motions towards the door that until this point, Edgar had assumed was a broom closet. “I’ve been trying to get her to change it so I can retain my title. Only one of us can sit on top.”

“Look, is this a prank show?” Edgar asks. “I mean—am I being interviewed, or is this an elaborate prank? For TV?”

“No, look, I swear this is real, I don’t have the face for TV,” Bartimaeus says, which isn’t even a little bit true—the more Edgar looks at his face, the more he sees the strong jawline, the glittering, even-set eyes. There’s something about him, beautiful and strange, like a face built out of dreams. “And to prove it, I’m going to look over your resume right now.” He readjusts the pair of spectacles on his nose and peers down through them at the folder. Hums, raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” he says after a moment, and pushes his glasses to the dome of his head, “these aren’t my glasses, I can’t actually read this.”

Edgar starts laughing. “Of course,” he says, feeling hysterical, “why not?”

“Deep breaths, chum,” Bartimaeus says, “wind down. This interview’s essentially just a formality, we’re going to offer you the post pretty much no matter what.”

Edgar stops laughing. “Really?” He asks. “Why?”

“You didn’t show up to this interview already high on cocaine, which puts you above the next-most-qualified candidate,” he replies. “To be honest with you, the position is pretty shit. The pay’s bad, and the university’s too small to boost your name or reputation. This isn’t a job with an opportunity for upward mobility. The administration’s desperate for any breathing human, and the deadline is in a week. They’ve got seventy students signed up for a class that doesn’t exist, and there are serious legal repercussions if they can’t deliver.” He leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the desk. Nice shoes. Oxfords, not brogues. “It’s a shit job, but it’s yours if you want it.”

Edgar nods. “Seems to be a bit of a trend with me.”

“More importantly, I know your old boss,” he adds, and Edgar’s skin goes cold all over, “and he called me to tell me I _couldn’t_ hire you. And I hate that dumb hunk of shit, so I’m _definitely_ going to hire you.”

It’s like a wash of gentle rosewater, cool in the heat of the office. “Oh my god,” Edgar says, grinning openly, “you too?”

“No, I _love_ that sycophantic, psychopathic, people-pleasing overbrusher with the soul of half a box of tic-tacs,” he snarls, and Edgar almost falls out of his chair, “who wouldn’t love the anthropomorphic personification of gas station sushi? He interviewed for a managerial position here a few years back, and he was all, fucking, _smug_ about the filthy _tolerance_ of this _great decade,_ I mean, God-fuckin’-forbid the American military let—well, like I said. Skin-crawling.” Bartimaeus wrinkles his nose. “Only thing Dr. Urov and I have ever agreed on. Nothing to bring two mortal enemies together like hatred for a homophobe with an online poker addiction.”

“You have no idea what a relief—mortal enemies?”

“It’s complicated. He’s the worst person alive, but I have to admire his work-avoidance tactics.” He waves a hand over the table. “Example: he’s the department head, and yet you’re having this conversation with me, a lowly professor.”

“Right,” Edgar says, tracking back through the past five minutes of conversation, “because he…ran. Through the window.”

“Exactly,” Bartimaeus replies, jerking a thumb at the windows behind him, “and not those ones, because they do not open. It’s like a fucking greenhouse in July, I swear. Anyway, um, congrats, you got the job. Want a drink? I think I’m supposed to have you here for half an hour, otherwise it looks like favoritism.”

“Yeah, uh, I’m gonna have to pass on that one,” Edgar says as Bartimaeus reaches under his desk, “you’re joking, though, right? Please tell me you’re joking. What is that.”

“Whiskey,” Bartimaeus says, and pulls the cork loose with the satisfying _thhhop_ of a bottle under carbonated pressure. “You drink whiskey? You kind of look like a vodka man.”

“What?” He eyes the bottle with horrified fascination. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“No, I mean you look good,” Bartimaeus says, somehow fully missing the gist of why Edgar’s worldview is currently shifting under his feet, “you look like you do crossfit. Uh, I don’t have any myself, but I think Queezle keeps some in her freezer for board meetings if you’d like.”

“So this _is_ a prank show,” Edgar says, “right? Cool. Thanks for letting me know. Um, this _is_ a real position?”

“No, no, I swear, I think she has that flavored stuff,” he insists, “pass me that paperweight, I’ll prove it.”

“These are all plants.”

“No, there’s, um, there’s a hackysack over there, could you just—yeah, it’s green—yeah, thanks,” he says, taking it from Edgar’s nervous hands. He leans back in his chair, turning his attention to the bookshelves. “Anyway, uh, Kobe, I guess,” he says, and hurls it with murderous force at the broom closet door between them. “Queezle!”

Edgar’s not sure what he was expecting to happen, but he knows what he _wasn’t_ expecting to happen, which is for the door to open by itself and reveal an office with a person inside of it. Instead of, like, brooms.

The woman who emerges blinking into the light appears just as unwilling to leave the eighties as they are to leave her. Her hair is enormous. Her sunglasses (which she is wearing inside) are also enormous. The dress slung low across her shoulders is both knitted _and_ belted, exposing a stack of approximately seventeen individual necklaces of varying lengths, each with its own bizarre pendant.

“This had better be good,” she says, in a beautifully low, mellifluous drawl that reminds Edgar of the elegant tides of the sea, or the slow blink of a stoned koala. She raises a hand to the side of her glasses with a waterfall ripple of bangles.

“The best,” Bartimaeus promises, “do you have any vodka?”

“You don’t drink vodka.”

“It’s not for me,” he insists, “it’s for him.” He juts an accusing pen across the table at Edgar, who wishes desperately that he were not here.

The woman he’s assuming is Queezle whips her head to face him, flipping one of her hoop earrings up into the netting of her curls, and then back to Bartimaeus. “Who’s he?”

“The new professor I just hired,” he says, “for that, um, History of Theology course thing.”

History of Theology?

“You don’t have hiring power,” she says suspiciously, “you have to wait for Faquarl to approve that.”

“He’s gonna approve it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The other guy was a methhead,” he assures her, “this one’s in the bag. Let’s drink to it.”

“I might have something,” she admits, “you got anything to trade?”

“Sorry,” Edgar interrupts, “History of Theology?”

Bartimaeus and Queezle look at each other, then back at him. Bartimaeus blinks mulishly. “That’s the opening, yeah,” he says. “That _is_ what you were interviewing for, right?”

Edgar thinks about his professional history teaching psychology, the questions he’d prepared to answer for this in the days prior. The ad had certainly _said_ the course was in psychology. Perhaps he’d found the wrong building—it wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten lost on an unfamiliar campus, and maybe the professors in that department would be sane… or maybe the ad was just mislabeled, or he was confused. He looks at the prospect of another hunt through the periodicals, yet another four weeks tacked on the end of the job search.

How many important academic works can there be on the history of theology? He knows his way around a library. There’s a professor who teaches it over at the ivy league who would probably be happy to give his required reading list to a ‘prospective student’ if he just makes a call. It’ll take…what, two weeks to write up a semester lesson plan? He’s got more time than that.

“Yes,” he lies, “that’s the position I was interviewing for.”

“Smart man,” Bartimaeus says, half a second before a hackysack pelts him in the side of the head.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Queezle says as he curses, “you got tequila?”

“Um, I have beer and triple sec,” he replies, peering under his table, “Corona and Canadian.”

“I’ll take two Coronas for that, yeah,” she says, fixes her gaze on Edgar, and snatches her sunglasses off her face. Her eyeshadow is vividly green. “So,” she says, addressing him at last, “what’s your look?”

“My… look?”

She clicks her tongue impatiently. “Your look,” she repeats, “your aesthetic. Your vibe. Whatever you want to call it. I can’t tell, ‘cause you’re in interview clothes, obviously—“ she gestures at him with a well-manicured hand, “—but people who drink vodka always have, like, a very toned look. Normally, I’d just tune into your aura, but I can’t see it, because I’m very hungover, and you aren’t wearing any crystals, which is _very_ rude of you but also perfectly understandable in an unfamiliar professional setting and I forgive you completely.”

Edgar chooses his words carefully. “Why… does it… _matter,”_ he manages.

“I’ve got four flavors of vodka in my fridge,” she retorts, “how am I supposed to know what kind is going to really attune your chakras if I can’t get an image of your spirit just like, _thriving_ under your ascendant star? How do you play it? I’m guessing sophisticated, but I don’t know if you have like an undertone of tragedy or slutty or repressed anger or what.”

“I—why don’t you just,” Edgar says, stumbling to keep up, _“tell me_ what flavors you have.”

She clicks her tongue again, but loosely, jaw moving like she’s chewing gum. “Um, I mean I _guess,”_ she says, “I have like, vanilla, and um, I think I have pineapple—or no, the pineapple stuff is rum. And then I have, um, that strawberry lemonade stuff? But like, I’ve already mixed that with pink lemonade in a Dasani bottle and I have already put that in my mouth and got my spit and lipstick on it, so if that grosses you out, I guess you’re just not, like, a Taurus or whatever.”

“Oh my _God,”_ Bartimaeus wails, and when Edgar glances back towards him, he realizes that the professor has sunk somewhere beneath the desk and is fully out of sight. “I fully regret asking for your help.”

“Don’t be a bitch,” Queezle tells him, tone benign, and then—to Edgar—“I’m sorry, I never actually caught your name. Who are you?”

“Um, Edgar,” he says, “Edgar Vargas.”

“Vargas, cool,” she says, replacing her sunglasses, “I’m Queezle Queezle. First name Queezle, last name Queezle. At first it was just Queezle, like Prince or Retta, but now I’ve rebranded myself. Um, I’m gonna get you just, like, a suicide of what I have in my fridge as a token of good will, minus the beer and diet pepsi, okay? Give me thirty seconds.”

She disappears back into the not-a-broom-closet, and as the door closes, Edgar gets a whiff of incense. Is she burning incense? Is she allowed to do that?

“Is she burning incense in there?” Edgar whispers over the desktop. “Is she allowed to do that?”

“This building is basically condemned,” Bartimaeus replies, from the floor. “I have no idea why we’re even allowed to be in here. So, I mean, maybe. Probably not.”

“Condemned?”

The door swings open again, and Queezle extends a mug triumphantly towards Edgar, who takes it without thinking. _’Grendel Was Right’_ is printed on the side. “There,” she says, and then, “hey, what kind of concealer do you use?”

“Um,” Edgar says, looking down into the mug. The liquid is pink, and he can smell the alcohol coming off of it. Drinking it might literally kill him. “I don’t, uh, use any.”

She blinks. “Foundation,” she says, “or whatever you use.”

“I don’t really wear makeup,” he says cautiously. She _probably_ can’t see his eyelash extensions, right? Right.

“You don’t wear makeup,” she says flatly. “So your face just _looks_ like that?”

“Um,” he says, “yes?”

She sighs, aggravated. “Figures,” she says, rolling her eyes, “I hate men. Nice meeting you, I’m gonna go vomit in a trash can and sleep for another four hours. Later.”

She retreats in a flurry of bangles and perfume back into the dark-lit room and kicks the door shut behind her. Edgar adjusts his glasses and—on an old caffine-addicted instinct, takes a sip out of his mug and immediately spits it back out. It tastes like jet fuel. Mixed tastefully with pink lemonade.

“Um,” he says, trying to not to sound like he’s currently gagging on his own saliva. One of Bartimaeus’ shoes appears over the edge of the desk, sole facing upward like a dead bird in a cartoon. “So…what do you…teach,” he adds after a moment, hunting for something to make conversation with.

“Graduate Egyptology,” he says. The reply is muffled from the ground. “History of Middle Eastern Civilization parenthesis-from-Ur-to-Solomon’s-Jerusalem-end-parenthesis, a writing-intensive on Non-Greco-Roman Epics with a focus on Gilgamesh, and Politics of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Oh, and last week Faquarl informed me that apparently I’m teaching a lecture hall on Pre-Colonial American Cultures. I don’t even _know_ anything about American history, period! Colonial or no!”

“Faquarl?”

“Er, sorry,” he says. The foot disappears in a shuffle and a grunt, and a moment later, Bartimaeus’ head appears in its place. His glasses have disappeared off somewhere. Probably on the floor. “That’s Urov, I always forget no one else calls him that. We unfortunately go way back.” There’s more grunting. He settles into his seat. “If I can give you a piece of advice—don’t stick around this job too long. The longer Urov knows you, the more he knows about your social life, and the less guilty he’ll feel about piling courseloads on you. Three years, that should be your maximum. Queezle’s been here for four and he’s just asked her to teach a class she knows nothing about on, uh, Beowulf or Shakespeare or some old British shit nobody wanted to run. Lovelace used to teach that, but he quit on us all at once in April, and as usual, the summer’s been a scramble. You get used to it.”

Edgar looks at the mug in his hand. “I’m guessing it’s Beowulf,” he says. “Uh, that stuff all seems pretty niche—your classes, I mean. I’m sort of surprised there’s a demand for it—er, no offense. It just seems like a small school.”

“You’re gonna have to work a lot harder than that to offend me,” Bartimaeus assures him. “Anyway, I don’t even know why we’ve got so many. Any time one of my classes fills up, I feel like I go into legitimate shock. There’s certainly no demand for minutia. I mean, they’ve all got such _long names,_ I don’t even—I mean, I would’ve gone apeshit for half of these back when I was in university, but that hardly means anything, ‘cause _I_ was a fucking _geek.”_ He sighs, and reaches for the glass of whiskey on his desk. “You know, if I had an ounce of sense, I’d give multiple choice exams. I’m still grading from my summer course.” He gestures meaningfully at the towers of paper.

“You don’t do multiple choice?”

“I don’t think standardized testing is a good measure of whether or not students get what I’m telling them,” he says, “plus, most of my classes have like, twenty kids, max. Except now I’m teaching five classes or so a semester, plus whatever spot has to get filled.” He glances up. “Vargas, I’m warning you, this is a bad job. You should walk away now.”

Edgar thinks about this. “You know, if you said _nice_ things about the job, you might get more applicants and better candidates,” he says. “You wouldn’t have to hire someone with a criminal record.”

“I heard the charges got dropped,” Bartimaeus says brightly. “No time in prison means no one could prove you did anything wrong.”

“Thanks for that,” Edgar says. “I didn’t, you know. Do anything wrong.”

“Obviously I can’t trust you implicitly, but that just about clocks,” Bartimaeus says. “That’s how it is for some of us. I used to teach in Cairo, you know, and in London. But I’m pretty bad at staying out of trouble.” He waves a hand at the office. “This was supposed to be a brief stop to let some damages that some people _may_ or _may not_ believe I caused,” he says, “hunkering down, letting it all blow over. I shouldn’t have stuck around so long.”

Edgar glances around the office, from the welded-shut windows to the plants to the mess of paper. On one of the walls, as there is in pretty much every professor’s office he’s ever been in in his life, there is a framed degree. It says Bartimaeus Necho is a graduate of Cambridge. _Cambridge._ He stares across the table. “I know it’s not a kind thing to ask,” he says after a moment, “but then… why are you still here?”

Bartimaeus stares down at a piece of paper on his desk, and when Edgar glances at it, he sees that it’s a student roster. “I’m waiting for someone,” he says, and his voice feels old, like it’s coming from thousands of years away. “I’m waiting for a better life than the one I left behind.”

Edgar takes the bus home, and checks the mail on the way up to his apartment. Jimmy is sitting on one of the camping chairs on the balcony, smoking pensively and smelling like sweat and weed. He twists around when Edgar walks out to join him.

“How’d it go?” He asks. He scratches at an acne scar pensively. Edgar likes the way he looks after long shifts at work, when his hair is unstyled and his eyeliner is rubbed almost all the way off. He’s letting the cigarette burn down in his fingers without taking another drag. “Did you get a good feeling about it? Were they, you know, cool?”

He’s anxious—anxious on Edgar’s behalf. Edgar opens his mouth to tell him the good news, to reassure him, but only gets as far as “I—“ before, in confusion, he closes it again. “Well,” he says, and stops again. Where is he supposed to start? Nothing he says will sound real. Jimmy’s going to accuse him of taking ketamine by mistake again. Maybe he _did_ take ketamine by mistake.

“The important thing,” he settles on after a moment, “is that I have _a_ job.”

Jimmy whoops, and throws the still lit cigarette over the balcony to crawl into his lap and kiss him, which is as dizzying as it’s always been. “We did it,” he says when he pulls away, “I told you we’d do it!”

“It’s not the job I applied for,” Edgar says quickly.

“Whatever,” Jimmy says, and kisses him again.

“It’s weird,” Edgar says, when he catches his breath. “I mean, it’s a _really_ weird job. I don’t know if I can even explain how weird it is.”

“Good. If you have a normal job, what are you going to tell me about when you get home?”

“I had to take the bus home,” he says, “I got drunk.”

“You went to a bar? Did you bring me anything?”

“No, at the interview,” Edgar says. “They gave me a vodka lemonade.”

“What?”

“It was pink.”

_“What?”_


End file.
